First systematic analysis of its kind even proposes reasons for the negative correlation.

More than 400 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Greek playwright Euripides wrote in his play Bellerophon, “Doth some one say that there be gods above? There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool, led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.”

Euripides was not an atheist and only used the word “fool” to provoke his audience. But, if you look at the studies conducted over the past century, you will find that those with religious beliefs will, on the whole, score lower on tests of intelligence. That is the conclusion of psychologists Miron Zuckerman and Jordan Silberman of the University of Rochester and Judith Hall of Northeastern University who have published a meta-analysis in Personality and Social Psychology Review.

This is the first systematic meta-analysis of 63 studies conducted between 1928 and 2012. In such an analysis, the authors look at each study’s sample size, quality of data collection, and analysis methods and then account for biases that may have inadvertently crept into the work. This data is next refracted through the prism of statistical theory to draw an overarching conclusion of what scholars in this field find. “Our conclusion,” as Zuckerman puts it, “is not new.”

“If you count the number of studies which find a positive correlation against those that find a negative correlation, you can draw the same conclusion because most studies find a negative correlation,” added Zuckerman. But that conclusion would be qualitative, because the studies’ methods vary. “What we have done is to draw that conclusion more accurately through statistical analysis.”

Setting the boundaries

Out of 63 studies, 53 showed a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity, while 10 showed a positive one. Significant negative correlations were seen in 35 studies, whereas only two studies showed significant positive correlations.

The three psychologists have defined intelligence as the “ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.” In short this is analytic intelligence, not the newly identified forms of creative and emotional intelligence, which are still subjects of dispute. In the various studies being examined, analytic intelligence has been measured in many different ways, including GPA (grade point average), UEE (university entrance exams), Mensa membership, and Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests, among others.

Religiosity is defined as involvement in some (or all) facets of religion, which includes belief in the supernatural, offering gifts to this supernatural, and performing rituals affirming their beliefs. Other signs of religiosity were measured using surveys, church attendance, and membership in religious organizations.

Among the thousands of people involved in these studies, the authors found that gender or education made no difference to the correlation between religiosity and intelligence; however, age mattered. The negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence was found to be the weakest among the pre-college population. That may be because of the uniqueness of the college experience, where most teenagers leave home for the first time, get exposed to new ideas, and are given a higher degree of freedom to act on them. Instead, in pre-college years, religious beliefs may largely reflect those of the family.

The gifted, the atheists

Is there a chance that higher intelligence makes people less religious? Two sets of large-scale studies tried to answer this question.

The first are based on the Terman cohort of the gifted, started in 1921 by Lewis Terman, a psychologist at Stanford University. (The cohort is still being followed.) In the study, Terman recruited more than 1,500 children whose IQ exceeded 135 at the age of 10. Two studies used this data, one conducted by Robin Sears at Columbia University in 1995 and the other by Michael McCullough at the University of Miami in 2005, and they found that “Termites,” as the gifted are called, were less religious when compared to the general public.

What makes these results remarkable is not just that these gifted folks were less religious, something that is seen among elite scientists as well, but that 60 percent of the Termites reported receiving “very strict” or “considerable” religious training while 33 percent received little training. Thus, almost all of the gifted Termites grew up to be less religious.

The second set of studies is based on students of New York’s Hunter College Elementary School for the intellectually gifted. This school selects its students based on a test given at a young age. To study their religiosity, graduates of this school were queried when they were between the ages of 38 and 50. They all had IQs that exceeded 140, and the study found that only 16 percent of them derived personal satisfaction from religion (about the same number as the Termites).

So while the Hunter study did not control for factors such as socioeconomic status or occupation, it did find that high intelligence at a young age preceded lower belief in religion many years later.

Other studies on the topic have been ambiguous. A 2009 study, led by Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster, compared religious beliefs and average national IQs of 137 countries. In their sample, only 23 countries had more than 20 percent atheists, which constituted, according to Lynn, "virtually all higher IQ countries." The positive correlation between intelligence and atheism was a strong one, but the study came under criticism from Gordon Lynch of Birkbeck College, because it did not account for complex social, economical, and historical factors.

Enlarge/ The relationship between countries' belief in a god and national average IQ.

It’s the beliefs, stupid

Overall, Zuckerman, Silberman, and Hall conclude that, according to their meta-analysis, there is little doubt a significant negative correlation exists (i.e. people who are more religious score worse on varying measures of intelligence). The correlation is more negative when religiosity measures beliefs rather than behavior. That may be because religious behavior may be used to help someone appear to be part of a group even though they may not believe in the supernatural.

So why do more intelligent people appear to be less religious? There are three possible explanations. One possibility is that more intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. A 1992 meta-analysis of seven studies found that intelligent people may be more likely to become atheists when they live in religious societies, because intelligent people tend to be nonconformists.

The most common explanation is that intelligent people don’t like to accept any beliefs that are not subject to empirical tests or logical reasoning. Zuckerman writes in the review that intelligent people may think more analytically, which is “controlled, systematic, and slow”, as opposed to intuitively, which is “heuristic-based, mostly non-conscious, and fast." That analytical thinking leads to lower religiosity.

The final explanation is that intelligence provides whatever functions religion does for believers. There are four such functions as proposed by Zuckerman, Silberman, and Hall.

First, religion provides people a sense of control. This was demonstrated in a series of studies conducted between 2008 and 2010, which showed that threatening volunteers’ sense of personal control increased their belief in God. This may be because people believe that God makes the world more predictable and thus less threatening. Much like believing in God, higher intelligence has been shown to grant people more “self-efficacy,” which is the belief in one’s ability to achieve goals. So, if intelligent people have more control, then perhaps they don’t need religion in the same way that others do.

Second, religion provides self-regulation. In a 2009 study, it was shown that religion was associated with better well-being. This was interpreted as an indication that religious people were more disciplined in pursuing goals and deferring small rewards for large ones. Separately, a 2008 meta-analysis noted that intelligent people were less impulsive. Delayed gratification may require better working memory, which intelligent people have. So, just like before, intelligence is acting as a substitute for religion, helping people delay gratification without needing divine interventions.

Third, religion provides self-enhancement. A 1997 meta-analysis compared the intrinsically religious, who privately believe in the supernatural, to the extrinsically religious, where people are merely part of a religious group without believing in God. The intrinsically religious felt better about themselves than the general public. Similarly, intelligent people have been shown to have a sense of higher self-worth. Again, intelligence may be providing something that religion does.

Last, and possibly the most intriguing, is that religion provides attachment. Religious people often claim to have a personal relationship with God. They use God as an “anchor” when faced with the loss of a loved one or a broken relationship. Turns out intelligent people find their “anchor” in people by building relationships. Studies have found that those who score highly on measures of intelligence are more likely to be married and less likely to get divorced. Thus, intelligent people have less need to seek religion as a substitute for companionship.

Give me the caveats

This meta-analysis only targets analytic intelligence, which surely is not the full measure of human intelligence despite the ongoing debate about how to define the rest of it. Also, although the review encompasses all studies conducted from 1928 to 2012, it only does so for studies written in the English language (two foreign language studies were considered only because a translation was available). The authors believe there are similar studies conducted in Japan and Latin America, but they did not have the time or resources to include them.

Zuckerman also warns that, despite there being thousands of participants overall, ranging among all ages, almost all of them belong to Western society. More than 87 percent of the participants were from the US, the UK, and Canada. So after controlling for other factors, they can only confidently show strong negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity among American Protestants. For Catholicism and Judaism, the correlation may be less negative.

There are some complications to the explanations too. For example, the non-conformist theory of atheism cannot apply to societies where the majority are atheists, such as Scandinavian countries. The possible explanations are also currently just that—possible. They need to be empirically studied.

Finally, not all studies reviewed are of equal quality, and some of them have been criticized by other researchers. But that is exactly why meta-analyses are performed. They help overcome limitations of sample size, poor data, and questionable analyses of individual studies.

As always, the word “correlation” is important. It hasn’t been shown that higher intelligence causes someone to be less religious. So, it wouldn’t be right to call someone a dimwit just because of their religious beliefs. Unless, of course, you are an ancient playwright looking to provoke your audience.

However a rational atheist would understand that family and societal morals are nonbinding on individuals apart from the use of violent coercion by state authorities to enforce arbitrary moral rules on moral dissenters.

That is only true if you have no desire to actually live in society.

So in atheist society, right and wrong are defined by the conventional wisdom (i.e. perceived self interests) of the dominant group in society ? If not, how could any other interpretation be the case, unless we're going to include wisdom handed down through many generations into this ?

And in Christian society, right and wrong is defined by a book that accepted slavery and stoning of raped women?

You clearly don't understand it. Little point having this discussion until you have read it more thoroughly and studied some of the historical context and thinking surrounding it. For the record it was Christians inspired by the Bible who put an end to slavery and the founder of Christianity who put an end to the stoning of women.

Okay, I think I see why we are going in circles. I originally claimed that I could falsify the Christian god based upon the claims most Christians make about god simply using logic. I also admitted that I couldn't falsify a god whose existence/non-existence were the same.

Which isn't really an accurate description of the God most Christians profess faith in. A God you that exists but you cannot detect is not the same thing as a God that doesn't exist. Many things existed before we were able to detect them. It didn't make them any less real, even though we couldn't verify their existence.

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I grew up going to church every Sunday and have seen other branches of Christianity through friends or reading about them, so I know the kind of claims most Christians make about god and understand them to be fallacious.

I think this, more than anything, is what your claims are really about.

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The Christian god, the way you seem to define it, seems to differ from the majority of Christians. When you make god unknowable whose behavior is identical to an universe where god does not exist; correct I cannot falsify that god but that god's existence is ultimately irrelevant.

Again, this is not an accurate description of what I said, it's a straw man. Here, quick (and silly) example. You're working outside and you're hot. God makes the wind blow to cool you down. Now, that wind is in every way indistinguishable from non-God wind. You cannot detect the presence of God there. But, absent God, there would have been no wind. Again, simply because you can't detect where God intervened and can't "prove" God doesn't mean that the world would have been the same without God. The Higgs Boson existed long before we finally got around to being able to detect it.

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A god outside of reality that never interacts with the universe in a detectable way is simply not relevant and quite plainly not the god most Christians worship. So yes, you can shift the goalposts to a nebulous irrelevant god that I cannot falsify but in doing so you're simply engaging in rhetorical bullshit and ignoring the claims Christians are actually making and the sometime deleterious effect stemming from their nonsense.

No, I'm asking you to put aside the chip on your shoulder regarding Christianity and engage in some critical thinking. I'm saying God is undetectable, and we can't understand his reasons. You're routinely misrepresenting this as "God doesn't do anything". Again, Christians believe in a God that can do things in ways they cannot fathom or understand. That's not the same thing as believing in a God that can't do anything.

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Claiming that your myths are true and other myths are false is the fallacy of special pleading.

True! Also irrelevant to what we were discussing.

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Claiming that god cannot definitively reveal itself because that would trample free will is dis-proven by the myths in the bible where god did stuff like that all the time and free will still existed; as well as running afoul of affirming the consequent.

I never claimed that God couldn't reveal itself because it would trample free will, or at the least I didn't intend for what I said to come out that way. I claimed that God might not provide a roadmap for humans to worship it because it wants us to have free will. I also claimed that God might not WANT to reveal itself now for reasons beyond our comprehension (which is part of Christian teachings). I think you and I may have had a bit of miscommunication on this front.

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You also seem to be ignoring the fact that Christians engage in circular logic with the a priori assumption that their particular god exists.

I don't think it's particularly relevant to the discussion of whether or not you can falsify the Christian god, personally. I haven't brought up many of the problems with religion. It doesn't mean that I'm not aware of them, it means they aren't relevant to the discussion of whether you can falsify entire belief systems.

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I also still maintain believing in things with no evidence is not a good thing. Training and praising people who believe in things with no evidence, ie embracing gullibility, is not a good thing and leaves the faithful vulnerable to abuse.

Which seems more like the belief of someone disenfranchised with their own religious upbringing, and less a fair assessment of religion as a whole. I said from the beginning that some people view atheism as something about them that separates them from other people, that puts them above them. You're implying here that belief inherently makes someone more gullible. I think you're proving my point for me by doing this. You're not the first person I've met who has been raised Christian and rejected it-- and quite militantly, at that. Your beliefs on God don't really concern me. The unjustifiable sense of superiority that it seems like you have does.

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In the end, yes you can redefine the Christian god to utter irrelevancy that is not falsifiable, but that just makes your god irrelevant.

I've addressed this above several times, but I'll say it one last time. Just because something is undetectable to us doesn't mean it didn't have an effect that, absent its presence, would not have happened.

An outside observer might conclude such, but from the point of view of a religious person, there is a moral code to which he and all other human beings are bound. When an entire society shares a common religion, then there is moral common ground.

For atheists, there can never be common ground, as there is no moral authority. So, if I were an atheist, I would have no logical reason to do anything other than seek to maximize my own pleasure and comfort, which necessarily presupposes that I would seek to avoid antagonizing those in power while nonetheless feeling fundamentally unbound by any societal "rules" with which I disagree.

The word "inhumane" implies a value judgement but there are no value judgements in atheism which are binding beyond the conscience of the person who makes them.

It's not our fault that you're inherently a worse person than those who don't claim to fear God therefore have nothing but their own ideals to stand up to.

So if you ever lose your faith, can we expect you to start raping and murdering as you've described your inclinations to lie? Should a cop be called to watch your house to make sure no raping and murdering is occurring when you have no God to fear?

Theists are incredibly good at working around their moral code.

I'm sure you haven't and will never click the link I posted, because you are not sincere.

However a rational atheist would understand that family and societal morals are nonbinding on individuals apart from the use of violent coercion by state authorities to enforce arbitrary moral rules on moral dissenters.

That is only true if you have no desire to actually live in society.

So in atheist society, right and wrong are defined by the conventional wisdom (i.e. perceived self interests) of the dominant group in society?

The word "atheist" in that sentence is unnecessary. The sentence as a whole applies equally well if the dominant group happens to be theistic.

It would apply equally well a. to theistic societies where accumulated wisdom concerning moral issues is _not_ handed down through generations, or b. to theocracies. And I'm defending neither kind. It doesn't apply to societies with some recognition of Church and sufficient separation between Church and State. Of course nowadays we also have written laws which partly meet the requirement of accumulating moral teaching, but written laws all originated from moral teachings in books considered holy, and the law has never been, and can never be an acceptable definition of right and wrong.

Ever thought about how respect for the interpreters of law ( lawyers and in Biblical times Pharisees ) is in inverse proportion to the number of lawyers a society employs ? If we've got nothing better than the law for this purpose of accumulating moral understanding and providing moral guidance, there is little prospect, other than through appropriate respect for the accumulated moral teachings from previous generations, and through some means of authenticating these as definitive and reliable, that the conventional wisdom of the currently dominant group can be held to account. That's apart from through the overthrow of the currently dominant group and its replacement with another dominant group. "Meet the new boss, same Mr old boss" (Pete Townshend).

The problem with approaches involving rejecting historical moral wisdom is that society needs those with moral authority - but no other power - to be able to challenge those with power but no moral authority. Consequently, without some social agreement concerning the identity and interpretation of historical moral wisdom, no-one without power is accepted as having moral authority, which means the dominant group can then do whatever suits their interests and without being held to account (other than by greater power) because no-one else defines right and wrong.

However a rational atheist would understand that family and societal morals are nonbinding on individuals apart from the use of violent coercion by state authorities to enforce arbitrary moral rules on moral dissenters.

That is only true if you have no desire to actually live in society.

So in atheist society, right and wrong are defined by the conventional wisdom (i.e. perceived self interests) of the dominant group in society ? If not, how could any other interpretation be the case, unless we're going to include wisdom handed down through many generations into this ?

And in Christian society, right and wrong is defined by a book that accepted slavery and stoning of raped women?

You clearly don't understand it. Little point having this discussion until you have read it more thoroughly and studied some of the historical context and thinking surrounding it. For the record it was Christians inspired by the Bible who put an end to slavery and the founder of Christianity who put an end to the stoning of women.

Hey, it's not my fault that Bible says that slavery is ok or that raped women should be stoned to death! And for the record: it was Christians who were involved in the slave-trade.

Oh, and "historical context"? Are you saying that moral codes of the Bible are only relevant for the time it were written in? Then why the fuck are we supposed to use it as a moral guide TODAY?!

Oh, and the parts about slavery and stonings are not relevant anymore? Why not? Because society has changed? Well, no shit Sherlock, and that just goes to show that Bible is NOT the universal guide to morality since its not universally relevant anymore.

Bible also says that working on the Sabbath is forbidden. So is it immoral to work then? Why not? Same thing for homosexuality, is it immoral? Why? I mean, for something to be immoral, it needs to be harmful. Homosexuality is not, so what makes it immoral? Because Bible sez so?

Jesus, it would be nice if Christians actually used their brains when determining what is right and wrong, instead of outsourcing everything that requires thinking to the fucking Bible. But then I'm reminded by the subject of this article...

It's not our fault that you're inherently a worse person than those who don't claim to fear God therefore have nothing but their own ideals to stand up to.

Explain to me the difference between someone who justifies their judgement of others because they believe in God and someone who justifies their judgement of others just because they don't believe in God.

Seems to me that believing yourself to be better than someone else because of your beliefs and insulting those people who don't agree with you as being less moral is the same no matter which side of the fence you're on...and is especially hilarious when the issue at stake is morality.

The idea that the Christian God is an unknowable god is laughable on its face because it is demonstrably false. Christians profess knowledge about what their god wants, asserting their moral values as being representative of what their god wants. But when challenged with logical inconsistencies in these assertions, they fall back to the classic "mysterious ways" excuse. Of course, if you took it even one step further, it's obvious why this is idiotic: if the god works in "mysterious ways" or is "unknowable" to the extent that our logic can't be applied to it, then those original assertions of moral values couldn't have been gotten from this "unknowable" god. The very excuse to shield the house of cards from outside attack ends up pulling the entire rug out from under it.

An "unknowable" god or one that is beyond our logic and reasoning is one that doesn't put forth any assertions or dogma of any sort. That is a simple tautology. It is basically a deist god. And that is not the Christian God.

Equally possible is that the most intelligent people have learned that providing non-religious answers will get them the best "grades", promotions, grants, etc.If one is smart enough to know the answer that is expected, one can provide that answer independent of one's own beliefs. With more intelligence should come more knowledge. With more knowledge comes knowing multiple answers to any given question. True intelligence is choosing the answer most appropriate for that particular question and understanding the limits of human knowledge.

I think you are way off base. Religion really adds no value and should play no role in schools or science.

It's not our fault that you're inherently a worse person than those who don't claim to fear God therefore have nothing but their own ideals to stand up to.

Explain to me the difference between someone who justifies their judgement of others because they believe in God and someone who justifies their judgement of others just because they don't believe in God.

Seems to me that believing yourself to be better than someone else because of your beliefs and insulting those people who don't agree with you as being less moral is the same no matter which side of the fence you're on...and is especially hilarious when the issue at stake is morality.

I'm referring to robberies, rape and murder, which many theists here have literally stated would be possible once they lost faith, and you're calling me immoral because I don't inherently respect your automatic dismissal of my personal moral code?

PS: I don't think you understand what "mortality" means as you're adopting this moral code in your mortal shell in order to exclusively achieve immortal gains (AKA YOUR SOUL.) As atheists (gnostic or gnostic) can ~not~ have morals according to your deranged belief, you must only be doing this to trick God while on this earth and not because being a good person is any ideal to achieve independent of Heavenly virtue.

I'm not ~better~ than any Good Christian by default, but I'm certainly better off than those judgmental, bigoted hypocrites who believe that atheists can't be moral creatures.

All these folks lived so shortly after Jesus that it is hard to believe that those early Christians made it up just so they could suffer persecution at the hands of the Roman authorities.

I'll take the consensus of historians of the time that these sources are reliable.

Christians were only persecuted by Romans during the Reign of Nero, as he tried to use them as a scapegoat for Rome burning down. The idea of Christians being fed to lions in the Coliseum is completely made up, as the construction of the Coliseum finished well after Nero's reign. Outside of Nero's persicution, Rome didn't care which god you worshipped as long as you paid taxes.

Actually that's not true. You could be persecuted for refusing to worship the Emperor, no matter what other faith you followed.

Nonsense and nonsense. The NT authors, with the exception of Paul and Luke were the Apostles that intimately knew Jesus during his ministry and Jesus was not "reincarnated". It's really hard to take you seriously. In any case, the question was not whether Jesus actually said that or not, though we have no reason to believe he didn't. The question was what did the church believed. If you can't even understand that distinction then you're completely out of your league and should just pack it in right now. "Reincarnated", right!

LOL... did I use the wrong term to refer to the magic fairy dust or something?

Regardless of the names associated with the gospels, none seem to have actually been written within the lifetimes of those people, unless they were really very old (like 80s or 90s), at which point we'd have to question their recollections anyway. Unless, of course, one believes in the magic ink or however it is God supposedly guided their hands. (Which he did a particularly bad job of, btw, considering the contradictions between the books.)

However a rational atheist would understand that family and societal morals are nonbinding on individuals apart from the use of violent coercion by state authorities to enforce arbitrary moral rules on moral dissenters.

That is only true if you have no desire to actually live in society.

So in atheist society, right and wrong are defined by the conventional wisdom (i.e. perceived self interests) of the dominant group in society?

The word "atheist" in that sentence is unnecessary. The sentence as a whole applies equally well if the dominant group happens to be theistic.

It would apply equally well a. to theistic societies where accumulated wisdom concerning moral issues is _not_ handed down through generations, or b. to theocracies. And I'm defending neither kind. It doesn't apply to societies with some recognition of Church and sufficient separation between Church and State.

Whether or not "accumulated wisdom" is handed down through generations (or rejected by a given generation) is orthogonal to theistic beliefs. Similarly, if you separate "legal" from "moral" (as you do in the next two paragraphs), your second distinction is a non-distinction.

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Of course nowadays we also have written laws which partly meet the requirement of accumulating moral teaching, but written laws all originated from moral teachings in books considered holy, and the law has never been, and can never be an acceptable definition of right and wrong.

Ever thought about how respect for the interpreters of law ( lawyers and in Biblical times Pharisees ) is in inverse proportion to the number of lawyers a society employs ? If we've got nothing better than the law for this purpose of accumulating moral understanding and providing moral guidance, there is little prospect, other than through appropriate respect for the accumulated moral teachings from previous generations, and through some means of authenticating these as definitive and reliable, that the conventional wisdom of the currently dominant group can be held to account. That's apart from through the overthrow of the currently dominant group and its replacement with another dominant group. "Meet the new boss, same Mr old boss" (Pete Townshend).

The problem with approaches involving rejecting historical moral wisdom is that society needs those with moral authority - but no other power - to be able to challenge those with power but no moral authority. Consequently, without some social agreement concerning the identity and interpretation of historical moral wisdom, no-one without power is accepted as having moral authority, which means the dominant group can then do whatever suits their interests and without being held to account (other than by greater power) because no-one else defines right and wrong.

That is not a problem unique to theism or secularism.

e.g. The Protestants had no "moral authority" per the Catholic church, until that time at which they gained sufficient numbers and/or momentum to form a societal agreement of their own.

Now, Christians do think that they are morally superior (because a book says so), so they feel that they have their right to push their morality on to others.

This is an absolute statement and thus pretty much false on it's face.

Sure, there are a lot of Christians who are like that. And there are a lot of atheists who do the same exact thing in a very slightly different context.

Now, if I want to feel superior, it can be over the fact that I'm confident and comfortable with my own belief system that I don't feel the need to try to convert others. The universal response to me telling people I know (who I don't also debate with) that I'm religious is for them to be surprised; most assume I'm an atheist because it's just not something I normally discuss.

Or it could be because I'm in the top .1% of the population as regards intelligence.

All these folks lived so shortly after Jesus that it is hard to believe that those early Christians made it up just so they could suffer persecution at the hands of the Roman authorities.

I'll take the consensus of historians of the time that these sources are reliable.

Christians were only persecuted by Romans during the Reign of Nero, as he tried to use them as a scapegoat for Rome burning down. The idea of Christians being fed to lions in the Coliseum is completely made up, as the construction of the Coliseum finished well after Nero's reign. Outside of Nero's persicution, Rome didn't care which god you worshipped as long as you paid taxes.

Actually that's not true. You could be persecuted for refusing to worship the Emperor, no matter what other faith you followed.

That's the conventional wisdom, but is not really a useful way to think about Roman persecution of Christians.

Emperor worship wasn't really that big a deal for Romans. It didn't seem to be a problem that the Jews refused to worship the Emperor. There was a "Jewish Tax", but otherwise the Romans were pretty much comfortable letting the Jews worship as they pleased, as long as there wasn't revolt. (And "as long as there wasn't revolt" was pretty much how the Romans dealt with all ethnicities within the empire.)

So the Christians were pretty much singled out, in this regard. If you look at the patterns, furthermore, you'll see that Christian persecutions were more local/regional. Tended to be driven by local/regional prejudice, not by imperial decree. The big problem was that Christianity tended to upset local social orders, as Christianity proselytizes while the local social hierarchies often revolved around temple cults.

EDIT: Sorry I used "pretty much" so often in this post. Makes my argument sound so much less credible. But if you Google around, you'll see that the "Emperor worship" argument for why the Romans persecuted Christians just doesn't really provide a full explanation.

All these folks lived so shortly after Jesus that it is hard to believe that those early Christians made it up just so they could suffer persecution at the hands of the Roman authorities.

I'll take the consensus of historians of the time that these sources are reliable.

Christians were only persecuted by Romans during the Reign of Nero, as he tried to use them as a scapegoat for Rome burning down. The idea of Christians being fed to lions in the Coliseum is completely made up, as the construction of the Coliseum finished well after Nero's reign. Outside of Nero's persicution, Rome didn't care which god you worshipped as long as you paid taxes.

Actually that's not true. You could be persecuted for refusing to worship the Emperor, no matter what other faith you followed.

It should be noted that when Christians got to a position of power in Rome, they themselves started persecuting others. Mithraism for example was one of the targets of early Christians.

Now, Christians do think that they are morally superior (because a book says so), so they feel that they have their right to push their morality on to others.

This is an absolute statement and thus pretty much false on it's face.

If you are one of the few Christians who is not compelled to push their morality on to others, great! I salute you! But fact remains that whenever we have cases where society is moving towards progressive and liberal policies (gay marriage, separation of church and state etc.) the Christians are at the vanguard of opposing those changes. And since (for example) gay marriage only affect gays, the only reason I can think of why Christians oppose such things, is their desire to push their morality on to others. Why else do they oppose things that do not concern them in any shape or form?

Now, Christians do think that they are morally superior (because a book says so), so they feel that they have their right to push their morality on to others.

This is an absolute statement and thus pretty much false on it's face.

If you are one of the few Christians who is not compelled to push their morality on to others, great! I salute you! But fact remains that whenever we have cases where society is moving towards progressive and liberal policies (gay marriage, separation of church and state etc.) the Christians are at the vanguard of opposing those changes.

I don't argue that there is a large segment of those who identify as Christians who use religion to support their bigotry or who are just to ignorant not to toe the line, but when many denominations of Christianity not only don't persecute gays but also allow them to be clergy, this is obviously a position based more on confirmation bias that pure numbers.

It's the issue with being in the middle that I spoke of earlier; If you're not vehemently on one side or the other, both sides will gang up and claim you either don't exist or don't count, despite moderates and centrists being the majority.

Okay, I think I see why we are going in circles. I originally claimed that I could falsify the Christian god based upon the claims most Christians make about god simply using logic. I also admitted that I couldn't falsify a god whose existence/non-existence were the same.

Which isn't really an accurate description of the God most Christians profess faith in. A God you that exists but you cannot detect is not the same thing as a God that doesn't exist. Many things existed before we were able to detect them. It didn't make them any less real, even though we couldn't verify their existence.

A god who exists that you cannot detect that doesn't interact with humanity in any meaningful way is identical to a god who does not exist. It is also a god whose existence is irrelevant to both theist and atheist alike. Why can't you understand this?

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I grew up going to church every Sunday and have seen other branches of Christianity through friends or reading about them, so I know the kind of claims most Christians make about god and understand them to be fallacious.

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I think this, more than anything, is what your claims are really about.

Yes, learning about Christianity growing up and later learning the reasons why my friends were religious is what this is about. I mean it has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity's logical inconsistencies and the complete lack of actual evidence.

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The Christian god, the way you seem to define it, seems to differ from the majority of Christians. When you make god unknowable whose behavior is identical to an universe where god does not exist; correct I cannot falsify that god but that god's existence is ultimately irrelevant.

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Again, this is not an accurate description of what I said, it's a straw man. Here, quick (and silly) example. You're working outside and you're hot. God makes the wind blow to cool you down. Now, that wind is in every way indistinguishable from non-God wind. You cannot detect the presence of God there. But, absent God, there would have been no wind. Again, simply because you can't detect where God intervened and can't "prove" God doesn't mean that the world would have been the same without God. The Higgs Boson existed long before we finally got around to being able to detect it.

Yes, your arguments are all very silly. Attributing a breeze to god is what's known as confirmation bias. Humans have a long history attributing agency to natural phenomenon. If I can't find my keys, did pixies take them? Someone's claiming the orbits of planets are controlled by invisible, undetectable unicorns, am I right to reject their nonsense? This again falls afoul of Russell's teapot, and you are literally making an argument from ignorance. Although, judging from your previous posts rejecting the pixie and invisible unicorn arguments is apparently arrogant and closed minded. So I expect you to accept the pixie and invisible unicorn hypothesis otherwise I get to decry you as the same.

You're also engaging in false equivalence between science and religion, again. If you can't make your arguments without invoking logical fallacies, I'm never going to believe you.

And once again you are missing the point, if the only miracles that your god does are ones indistinguishable from random every day events then your god is irrelevant to both theists and atheists, and might as well not exist. If your god's only selling point is that sometimes he makes a little wind now and then in a way indistinguishable from normal weather, then that is a pathetic god.

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A god outside of reality that never interacts with the universe in a detectable way is simply not relevant and quite plainly not the god most Christians worship. So yes, you can shift the goalposts to a nebulous irrelevant god that I cannot falsify but in doing so you're simply engaging in rhetorical bullshit and ignoring the claims Christians are actually making and the sometime deleterious effect stemming from their nonsense.

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No, I'm asking you to put aside the chip on your shoulder regarding Christianity and engage in some critical thinking. I'm saying God is undetectable, and we can't understand his reasons. You're routinely misrepresenting this as "God doesn't do anything". Again, Christians believe in a God that can do things in ways they cannot fathom or understand. That's not the same thing as believing in a God that can't do anything.

Nice ad-hom and straw man. "God is undetectable, and we can't understand his reasons" This makes your god irrelevant and no different from one that doesn't exist. This is what you seem to be incapable of understanding. If the Christian god can't be bothered to give us a clear set of rules or even at the very least demonstrate that it actually exists, then why bother with it at all?

You know who else has a chip on their shoulder? That child that pointed out the emperor was wearing no clothes. How arrogant of them to make such a claim without studying fashion in New York or France; I mean how else could they learn to appreciate the emperor's invisible vermillion vest?

You know who else is arrogant, scientists, what with their requirements of evidence and logical consistency. They must have a mighty big chip on their shoulder to be like that. I mean they rejected my hypothesis that the reason that the planet is warming is because cthulhu is waking up, and if you don't believe me then you are being arrogant and closed minded by not giving cthulhu a chance.

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Claiming that your myths are true and other myths are false is the fallacy of special pleading.

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True! Also irrelevant to what we were discussing.

No! It means the Christian god is no more valid an entity than Zeus, Odin, or Rah; and that to claim otherwise is to invoke this fallacy.

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Claiming that god cannot definitively reveal itself because that would trample free will is dis-proven by the myths in the bible where god did stuff like that all the time and free will still existed; as well as running afoul of affirming the consequent.

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I never claimed that God couldn't reveal itself because it would trample free will, or at the least I didn't intend for what I said to come out that way. I claimed that God might not provide a roadmap for humans to worship it because it wants us to have free will. I also claimed that God might not WANT to reveal itself now for reasons beyond our comprehension (which is part of Christian teachings). I think you and I may have had a bit of miscommunication on this front.

Again, you're arguing for a god whose existence is irrelevant. Also the apparent absence of god is a real problem for apologetics and I have yet to hear a good reason for it. You seem to keep falling into the theodicy hole, where god sacrifices it's morality claims and gives up any good reason for us to believe that it exists because it doesn't feel like showing itself.

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You also seem to be ignoring the fact that Christians engage in circular logic with the a priori assumption that their particular god exists.

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I don't think it's particularly relevant to the discussion of whether or not you can falsify the Christian god, personally. I haven't brought up many of the problems with religion. It doesn't mean that I'm not aware of them, it means they aren't relevant to the discussion of whether you can falsify entire belief systems.

It is relevant, when your entire claim about the existence of your god is based off of a logical fallacy, why should I believe you? You have zero evidence and posit an irrelevant god; I'm perfectly within my rights to tell you that you're talking nonsense.

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I also still maintain believing in things with no evidence is not a good thing. Training and praising people who believe in things with no evidence, ie embracing gullibility, is not a good thing and leaves the faithful vulnerable to abuse.

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Which seems more like the belief of someone disenfranchised with their own religious upbringing, and less a fair assessment of religion as a whole. I said from the beginning that some people view atheism as something about them that separates them from other people, that puts them above them. You're implying here that belief inherently makes someone more gullible. I think you're proving my point for me by doing this. You're not the first person I've met who has been raised Christian and rejected it-- and quite militantly, at that. Your beliefs on God don't really concern me. The unjustifiable sense of superiority that it seems like you have does.

More ad-hom's! And if you tell climate change denialists they're not making any sense and ignoring reality, is that you arrogantly putting yourself above them? Same for creationists. Same for anyone engaging in irrational nonsense. Next time I see you correcting some denialist I'll apparently have to call you out for your unjustifiable sense of superiority. That's also a nice set of standard "shut up atheist, I don't want to think about it" bullshit. If you can't even improve on the standard "militant" nonsense of anti-athiest irrationality, you're apparently not trying hard enough.

For your information, I was brought up in a very mellow Methodist church where when I was bored by the inanity of the preacher I could day dream. My sister was the one that rebelled against religion, I simply did not give a fuck. My problem is with promoting irrational behavior as a good thing.

Oh, I just got an email from a Nigerian prince and if I give him my banking information he will give me money, what can go wrong?

Oh, a priest is molesting children but says god told him that it was okay, can't argue with revelation from god.

The abdication of reason is never a good thing, and my concern is that training people not to think critically about the world around them leaves them more open to abuse. Yes praising people for their gullibility, which quite honesty what belief without evidence truly is, and pretending it is good does seem to make people more credulous.

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In the end, yes you can redefine the Christian god to utter irrelevancy that is not falsifiable, but that just makes your god irrelevant.

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I've addressed this above several times, but I'll say it one last time. Just because something is undetectable to us doesn't mean it didn't have an effect that, absent its presence, would not have happened.

You keep falling into false equivalence and the fallacy of false balance. You seem to be fine with all manner of logic fails on the part of the religious, but as soon as an atheist point them out the atheist is being militant and bad. So what, we punish the child who points out the emperor is wearing no clothes?

You didn't even bother to try to address the problem of evil (thodicy) but just goal post shifted your god straight into irrelevance. You claim that I'm being the irrational and arrogant one for not accepting your irrelevant god for which you have no evidence? If you want an unjustifiable sense of superiority, I think you should look in the mirror.

Just one more time in the hopes that something sinks in. You literally used goal post shifting to protect the Christian god from rational analysis and did it in such a way that makes your god utterly irrelevant. Irrelevant Why should I even bother with such a god?

You have no evidence, your entire premises for god existing is based on circular reasoning, and you added a nice bonus of an irrelevant god that for all practical purposes is identical to one that doesn't exist. And I'm the arrogant one with an unjustifiable sense of superiority for not believing this nonsense just because you say so? Argument from authority anyone?

Sorry I've posted this question before but it has never actually been answered but with people here claiming that religious faith is the only source of morality I'll ask it again in simplified form.

War can generally be considered bad as it causes destruction and suffering for many and generally only gain for the few. Many many wars have used religion as a justification if they have not been outright inspired by it.Religion claims to be the source of good in the world.

If religion is a force for good in the world can you name a single war in the history of civilization that has ever been stopped by a religion?

I'm referring to robberies, rape and murder, which many theists here have literally stated would be possible once they lost faith, and you're calling me immoral because I don't inherently respect your automatic dismissal of my personal moral code?

I think you need to check who you're replying to. I've never dismissed your personal moral code, nor did I call you immoral. I asked you to describe why you believe that you are more moral than the person you responded to earlier.

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I'm not ~better~ than any Good Christian by default, but I'm certainly better off than those judgmental, bigoted hypocrites who believe that atheists can't be moral creatures.

So they're only bad if they're judgemental...which is why you're judgemental about them?

I'm referring to robberies, rape and murder, which many theists here have literally stated would be possible once they lost faith, and you're calling me immoral because I don't inherently respect your automatic dismissal of my personal moral code?

I think you need to check who you're replying to. I've never dismissed your personal moral code, nor did I call you immoral. I asked you to describe why you believe that you are more moral than the person you responded to earlier.

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I'm not ~better~ than any Good Christian by default, but I'm certainly better off than those judgmental, bigoted hypocrites who believe that atheists can't be moral creatures.

So they're only bad if they're judgemental...which is why you're judgemental about them?

Just trying to get a sense of your position here.

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society... then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.” ― Karl Popper

I live in a predominantly atheist country, but the general population sure isn't predominantly intelligent. There are still plenty of gullible folks, they just accept other types of voodoo supernatural magic.

It would be interesting to see studies on the correlation between intelligence and skepticism. I think the method for arriving at a certain answer says more about an individual's intelligence than just the fact of their having arrived at such an answer.

Theism is belief in god, the "A" is a negative addition, turning the word into "not believing in one or more gods" which encompasses strict disbelief and statements of uncertainty as they both refuse the positive assertion of theism.

Actually the A in atheism means "without" not "against." This is a common misperception. An atheist can also be an antitheist (this is the against crowd) but they can also be a person for whom the question is meaningless and who thus don't care if others choose to have faith.

I didn't say against. I recognize the difference between atheist and antitheist (as I identified my self as both in a previous post)

A god who exists that you cannot detect that doesn't interact with humanity in any meaningful way is identical to a god who does not exist. It is also a god whose existence is irrelevant to both theist and atheist alike. Why can't you understand this?

Because you are, prima facie, misrepresenting the "interaction" that Christians profess. Again, quite simply, simply because you cannot detect that God has done something doesn't mean that, absent God, the same thing would happened. It is the fundamentaly, quite basic, flaw in your logic. You are assuming that absence of evidence of God acting is equivalent to evidence of God not acting. That's a fallacy.

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Yes, your arguments are all very silly. Attributing a breeze to god is what's known as confirmation bias. Humans have a long history attributing agency to natural phenomenon. If I can't find my keys, did pixies take them? Someone's claiming the orbits of planets are controlled by invisible, undetectable unicorns, am I right to reject their nonsense? This again falls afoul of Russell's teapot, and you are literally making an argument from ignorance. Although, judging from your previous posts rejecting the pixie and invisible unicorn arguments is apparently arrogant and closed minded. So I expect you to accept the pixie and invisible unicorn hypothesis otherwise I get to decry you as the same.

Do you not understand hypothetical exercises or something? I am not attributing it to God. I presented an example in a world where there IS a God. You pray, and God makes the wind blow one day, in such a way that you can't detect any difference between it and normal wind. However, if you had not prayed, and God had not acted, there would not have been wind at that moment. This is, quite simply, a hypothetical situation that describes, in a manner consistent with Christian beliefs, how God can exist, can change the world without being detected, and the world is NOT the same as there being no God at all. My point is that you have misrepresented the whole "undetectable" thing by presupposing that it also means "unable to act". This is an illogical assumption.

Quite simply, I am demonstrating how weak-kneed your repeated "an undetectable God is the same as no God at all" logic is. If you believe in a being that defies all laws of nature, there is, quite simply, no way to falsify this being. You profess that you are looking at Christian beliefs, but the whole "outside the scope of human understanding" part of God is something you've missed, time and time and time again. If I were a devout Christian, I'd probably be laughing at your inability to even understand the basic precepts of the religion you claim to be able to falsify.

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And once again you are missing the point, if the only miracles that your god does are ones indistinguishable from random every day events then your god is irrelevant to both theists and atheists, and might as well not exist. If your god's only selling point is that sometimes he makes a little wind now and then in a way indistinguishable from normal weather, then that is a pathetic god.

I'm amazed at how horrible this argument is. I never claimed that my example was the only thing that the Christian God could do. It was, quite simply, an off-the-cuff example. If you feel the need to make such pointless straw men, you're demonstrating the brittle nature of your own logic. Again, quite simply: a God who does things in an undetectable manner can do things that, absent God, would not have happened. Thus the whole false equivalence of "undetectable God = God who does nothing" is a massive, horrible leap of logic that poisons every bit of your argument. If you can't understand that the Christian idea of God is able to do things, that, absent God, would not have happened, and is simultaneously able to do these things in a way that is undetectable to mortals...then you are hopelessly lost when discussing Christianity. You, quite simply, are so rigorously biased or so devoid of comprehension that you cease to be able to discuss this with any degree of reason.

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Nice ad-hom and straw man. "God is undetectable, and we can't understand his reasons" This makes your god irrelevant and no different from one that doesn't exist. This is what you seem to be incapable of understanding.

Because it's quite simply a bullshit argument. I've explained this a number of times. Your lack of imagination aside, the whole concept of a being that exists outside your understanding and outside the laws of physics seems to pass you by. Christians don't believe God obeys physics. Why do you?

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If the Christian god can't be bothered to give us a clear set of rules or even at the very least demonstrate that it actually exists, then why bother with it at all?

Well, I'd imagine most Christians would say the whole "everlasting paradise" thing is a pretty good incentive to try to find God.

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No! It means the Christian god is no more valid an entity than Zeus, Odin, or Rah; and that to claim otherwise is to invoke this fallacy.

And how does that relate to the falsifiability of the Christian God?

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It is relevant, when your entire claim about the existence of your god is based off of a logical fallacy, why should I believe you? You have zero evidence and posit an irrelevant god; I'm perfectly within my rights to tell you that you're talking nonsense.

I wonder why you keep assuming this is my God. Your logic is flawed. I am explaining to you why that is. Nothing that I have said has indicated my faith. Your logic is flawed because you keep thinking you can falsify a God whose entire deal is that he's outside our understanding. Your argument has a critical flaw, one you apparently cannot see past. I've pointed out logical flaws towards some of the Christians here, too. Crappy logic, on either side, is irritating to me.

For what it's worth, I'm cutting the rest of your stuff because I'm honestly too bored by your repeated misrepresentation. If you can't be bothered to admit that for a Christian, believing in a God who is able to act decisively to change the world and is also powerful enough to do it in a way that is undetectable (but absent God, the same thing would NOT have occurred) then I'm sorry, but it's not something I'm interested in explaining in any smaller words. If you want to continue discussing this, we'll need to move on past that point. I'm happy to-- you seem to have a lot of other complaints about Christianity. I might not be able to address all of them, seeing as how I'm, you know, not really a Christian, but I'd be happy to discuss them, regardless.

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society... then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.” ― Karl Popper

A wonderfully circuitous argument. What if those you call intolerant are only not tolerating you because they feel that YOU are intolerant?

That being said, yes, there are many, many intolerant Christians. I'll not defend them, and truth be told, I react quite aggressively around those types of people. I trust science and reason over sky wizards any day of the week. My point, in all of this, has been to ask you fine folks to examine the way you treat those that do believe. I briefly discussed my experiences in high school, being both a triple varsity athlete and a geek because I believe it's relevant. Two groups, with different foci, but I kept noticing the same base emotions would be expressed. A desire for status, for power, within the group. The shameless "othering" of people not in the group. The same use of the core "strength" of one group as a determining factor for what made someone "better" than someone else.

I always hated when the jocks would rag on the nerds. It was obvious that they were judging people based only on their own standard of what made a person worthwhile. Honestly though, I hated it more when the people who proclaimed themselves as smarter were every bit as spiteful, mean, and judgmental of people who were not as smart as them. What good is it to be smarter if you're just as shitty a person on the inside as the jock who shoved you around?

The same is true here, too. I believe in evolution. I believe in climate change. I believe in science. But when I see people on the side of critical thinking acting the same way as the people they complain about...my reaction is to castigate the supposedly smarter people for their actions. If we want to be viewed as being better than the intolerant Christians, we need to be tolerant. If we want to be better than the immoral Christians, we must act morally. If we want to be better than the Christians with an superiority complex, we cannot believe we are inherently superior.

Basically, if we're as smart and awesome as we think we are, we damn well need to ACT that way. No one is going to take morality lessons from someone saying "you're less moral because you believe in God and only do things 'cause you're afraid."

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society... then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.” ― Karl Popper

A wonderfully circuitous argument. What if those you call intolerant are only not tolerating you because they feel that YOU are intolerant?

The town's barber shaves everyone who doesn't shave himself. So who shaves the barber?

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society... then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.” ― Karl Popper

Exactly. It is not intolerance to rebuke the intolerant (homophobes, racists, or any other hatemongers, etc.)

Theism is belief in god, the "A" is a negative addition, turning the word into "not believing in one or more gods" which encompasses strict disbelief and statements of uncertainty as they both refuse the positive assertion of theism.

Actually the A in atheism means "without" not "against." This is a common misperception. An atheist can also be an antitheist (this is the against crowd) but they can also be a person for whom the question is meaningless and who thus don't care if others choose to have faith.

I didn't say against. I recognize the difference between atheist and antitheist (as I identified my self as both in a previous post)

You called it negative, which in common language is taken to mean against.

If you don't mean it to be against, then perhaps the word neutral would be more appropriate.

They missed a possible explanation: That religion rejects the intelligent. Not that the intelligent reject religion, but that religious groups actively reject intelligent members. For instance, in the Christian Bible there are passages which contain things like "Lean not upon your own reasoning" and many other direct refutations of intellect.

I'm not proposing that this is the cause for the fact that religious people have lower IQs on average, just that it is a possibility that they did not consider.

Exactly. It is not intolerance to rebuke the intolerant, those who wish to dehumanize gays, racists, hatemongers, etc.

Just a note: This sentence is rather a bit ambiguously structured. At first read, I thought you were discussing rebuking those who wish to dehumanize racists and hatemongers.

It took me a second to parse that you were noting that it is not intolerant to rebuke racists and hatemongers in addition to those who wish to dehumanize gays.

Really, anyone that engages in othering or similar tribal behavior is deserving of rebuke and their faith or lack thereof is really beside the point beyond identifying which tribe they're claiming is superior.

I claim a special spider sometimes starts my car for me after I turn the ignition key and have implored it to do so. Sometimes I don't implore my special spider but the car always starts anyway. However, I also claim that the world would be different without my special spider because sometimes my car might not start if I didn't implore.

Now, I can't validate my claim because my special spider can't be seen or felt by anyone nor does it leave webs or a midden behind. Nor is there any measurable difference between whether my car starts or not based on whether I implore my special spider. Also, I take my car to the mechanic when it doesn't start.

Is my special spider of any value? In what way might my belief in my special spider be harmful?

Why does your god now (based on the source material for your god, he didn't used to) act in such a way as to be indistinguishable from not acting? Your answer is that your god is so mysterious that you can't ever understand why he acts (or does not act) the way he does. To me, that's just an excuse.

I remember how disappointed I was when I learned that Santa Claus was a falsehood made up by my parents in collusion with others. I resisted. I wanted to believe because the idea was so attractive and I had so many great memories of riches from a magic being that rewarded me for being good. Your explanations and excuses feel eerily familiar.

Please understand that I don't want you to take this personally. I don't have negative feelings toward you. I do think that your arguments are equivalent to excuses. And that your obviously strong desire for your god to be real causes you to create those excuses (or borrow them from those who've taught them to you).

Funny, I don't remember saying anything about believing in a God. You're the second person now who's made that assumption. You've both been equally wrong to do so. The logical problem I'm identifying is present regardless of belief.

Funny, I don't remember saying anything about believing in a God. You're the second person now who's made that assumption. You've both been equally wrong to do so. The logical problem I'm identifying is present regardless of belief.

Devils' advocating something in such an unclever manner identifies you perhaps not as a theist, but certainly as a troll.

Funny, I don't remember saying anything about believing in a God. You're the second person now who's made that assumption. You've both been equally wrong to do so. The logical problem I'm identifying is present regardless of belief.

It's rather unfortunate that those who so often claim superiority through reason are so quick to make such unsupported assumptions.

Oh, and welcome to the middle-ground. Where you get shit on by the extremists on both sides of the divide. The other side for being on "the wrong side" and your own side for not sharing their outrage.

Devils' advocating something in such an unclever manner identifies you perhaps not as a theist, but certainly as a troll.

Thinking that non-believers are making logical errors and arguing that they are erroneous without outright declaring that I don't identify as religious makes me a troll? So you're willing to outright state tell someone who believes in God that you're better than them because you're more moral, and when it's pointed out how hypocritical that potentially is, you identify the person who argues that, regardless of belief, a moral person doesn't typically go around telling people how much more moral they are, as a "troll".

I disagree with some people here on an intellectual level. If your reaction to people disagreeing with you and identifying issues of consistency in your behavior is to label them as the "other" and to block your mind to them...I posit that you and the fundamentalist Christians you mock have more in common than you think.

Devils' advocating something in such an unclever manner identifies you perhaps not as a theist, but certainly as a troll.

Thinking that non-believers are making logical errors and arguing that they are erroneous without outright declaring that I don't identify as religious makes me a troll? So you're willing to outright state tell someone who believes in God that you're better than them because you're more moral, and when it's pointed out how hypocritical that potentially is, you identify the person who argues that, regardless of belief, a moral person doesn't typically go around telling people how much more moral they are, you identify that person as a troll.

I disagree with some people here on an intellectual level. If your reaction to people disagreeing with you and identifying issues of consistency in your behavior is to label them as the "other" and to block your mind to them...I posit that you and the fundamentalist Christians you mock have more in common than you think.

You are truly the first "free thinker" to proclaim agnostic/gnostic atheists and agnostic/gnostic Christians "the same" in the history of apologetics.

It's not our fault that you're inherently a worse person than those who don't claim to fear God therefore have nothing but their own ideals to stand up to.

Explain to me the difference between someone who justifies their judgement of others because they believe in God and someone who justifies their judgement of others just because they don't believe in God.

Seems to me that believing yourself to be better than someone else because of your beliefs and insulting those people who don't agree with you as being less moral is the same no matter which side of the fence you're on...and is especially hilarious when the issue at stake is morality.

Speaking for myself, I don't believe I'm better than someone else based on the source of my moral compass. I'm merely pointing out the ludicrous nature of ws3's (and maybe copsewood too? can't keep it all straight anymore) notion that morality can ONLY come from a holy book, preferably one that's been passed down for several generations.

It is prima facie ridiculous. All you have to do to falsify it is look at any community where there is not a dominant Abrahamic religious tradition. If this were true, then you'd see a couple of things in the world: 1) differences in crime rates between otherwise similar communities (be they cities or countries), tightly correlated to religiosity; and 2) within the same community, changes in crime rates over time, again tightly correlated to religiosity. Europe is a great example. The last 50 years have seen a decline in people identifying as religious (typically, Catholic). I don't see blood running down the Champs Elysee, or gangland murder sprees in Pamplona.